


Ephemera

by fourteenlines



Category: Farscape
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-14
Updated: 2020-01-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:20:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22252483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fourteenlines/pseuds/fourteenlines
Summary: She will watch the skies all her life.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 4





	Ephemera

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Future Tense challenge at Farscape Friday.
> 
> Originally posted circa 2003.

She will watch the skies all her life, until her hair turns white and her eyes grow dim. Every day she will wake with the expectation that today will be the day he finally comes home. She will die proud and strong, facing upward. 

She will have moments of clarity in the long hours of the night, when she understands that all the world has changed, and this is not a homecoming worthy of her brother. This will not be a world she wants to live in any longer, and she will only imagine him settling back here in the vaguest terms, always colored with the dim brown light of better times. 

She will mourn their father twice over, because she knows it would have hurt him too deeply to describe. 

For decades afterward, she will entertain fantasies wherein he returns for a short while, and when he leaves again he will take her along. She will imagine letting go of her life more easily than sand slides through her fingers. She will have few lovers and fewer possessions; she will want nothing she would regret leaving behind. She will spend her money travelling, searching out remote corners of the world because she cannot reach the stars. 

One day, sitting in a cafe in New York looking out at the rain, or on a mountain top somewhere in New Zealand, or in one of a hundred other places, she will come to a realization: she has made no mark on this life. 

It was just under four years she believed he was dead. She will wait in expectation of him for ten times that and longer, believing him alive when logic should beg to differ. 

She will never stop watching the skies. 

But Olivia will never see her brother again. 


End file.
